


Show You The World

by AliceInKinkland



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, Post-Season/Series 6, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4530660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/pseuds/AliceInKinkland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out feeling <i>better</i> is a bit more complicated than looking at your sister one morning and realising you want to show her the world. It also turns out that telling your sister you want to show her the world leads, in Dawn’s mind at least, to Sister Bonding Via Road Trip.</p><p>Nominated at <a href="http://wicked-awards.livejournal.com/">the No Rest for the Wicked awards</a> round 12 for best gen fic!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show You The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spuffy_luvr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffy_luvr/gifts).



> For [buffy-genfic](http://buffy-genfic.livejournal.com/) round 1, for spuffy_luvr, who wanted Joyce’s Jeep, a road trip, car trouble, and muggle hitchhikers, and didn’t want vamp!Buffy or angst without some measure of hope. There is definitely some angst, but I’d like to think there’s quite a lot of hope here as well.
> 
> Warnings: brief and non-graphic references to depression and sexual assault
> 
> Icon by [red-satin-doll](http://red-satin-doll.livejournal.com/)

“Did you remember your toothbrush?” asks Buffy as Dawn slides into the passenger seat of their mom’s Jeep. Buffy’s Jeep now, really, as the nice people at the insurance company would be only too happy to remind her, but Buffy can’t think of the car as belonging to anyone but Joyce.

Dawn rolls her eyes. “Just like the first fifteen times you asked that, yes.”

“And sunscreen? Dawnie, you need to wear sunscreen.”

“Just because you want to look like you spend all your time wandering around graveyards in the dark doesn’t mean that I have to.”

“But there are, like, skin cancer thingies—” Buffy begins, but cuts herself off. If it was futile when their mother told teenage Buffy to avoid the California sun, Buffy’s pretty sure it will be equally futile trying to convince Dawn.

“And I brought music,” Dawn continues, brandishing a handful of cassette tapes. “You know, one of these decades we should get a car that plays CDs. Enter the twenty-first century.”

“Maybe when I’m not the only one of us with a job,” says Buffy, trying to keep her voice light. This weekend is supposed to be a break from all those kinds of worries—Dawn’s school is out, Buffy has three consecutive days off work, Giles called yesterday from England and said Willow was making progress on the not-causing-apocalypses front. Perfect time for a road trip. According to Dawn Logic.

Buffy has to admit, it holds up pretty well under Buffy Logic, too. Buffy’s just not been feeling very logical, lately. If she’s being honest, she’s been feeling like crap. Not wanting-to-die levels of crap, not even can’t-get-out-of-bed levels, which is a nice change from most of the past year. But she’s not _better_ , whatever that means. It turns out feeling _better_ is a bit more complicated than looking at your sister one morning and realising you want to show her the world.

It also turns out that telling your sister you want to show her the world leads, in Dawn’s mind at least, to Sister Bonding Via Road Trip. So here they are in Joyce’s car, bags packed with snacks and clothes and a wallet containing most of Buffy’s last paycheck, backseat littered with maps of the highway routes to San Francisco.

Buffy starts the engine, hoping the excitement will kick in soon. Adventure! The open road! She feels her shoulders slump as she grips the steering wheel. Beside her, Dawn pops one piece of licorice, one Jolly Rancher, and one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup into her mouth at once.

* * *

“You know what we should do?” says Dawn, flipping the cassette copy of her Avril Lavigne CD back to side A. “We should pick up some hitchhikers.”

“Because I don’t introduce you to enough things that want to murder you,” says Buffy. Three hours into their drive, and she’s feeling a lot more relaxed. Maybe Dawn’s right, maybe getting out of Sunnydale is a good Buffy Mental Health Plan after all.

“Please. Most hitchhikers aren’t murderers, or creepy rapists—” Buffy hates the way she stiffens at _that word_ , and hates the way Dawn falls silent as she sees Buffy’s knuckles go white as she grips the steering wheel tighter. Who is she kidding—a road trip isn’t enough to make her feel better, not when there are things in her recent past that she doesn’t even know how to begin to process, things she has, in fact, just been doing her best not to think about at all. She suddenly feels like she’s going to be sick, as though her lungs are clogged up like the guy at her work with the burger grease plugs in his ears.

“No hitchhikers,” says Dawn. “It’s supposed to be just the two of us anyway, right?”

“No, I—if we see someone who doesn’t look creepy, let’s go for it,” says Buffy. She’s still struggling to recalibrate her and Dawn’s relationship after the train wreck that was the previous year, still working to find a new balance where she doesn’t try to protect Dawn too much but also doesn’t let her run wild. She’s not quite sure which side of the line “picking up hitchhikers” falls under, but it’s not like Buffy couldn’t fight off a couple hypothetical human travelers if it came to that.

Half an hour later, Dawn says, “Look!” Buffy follows her pointing finger to see two people—one guy, one girl—standing on the roadside with their thumbs in the air. Buffy has to admit they look pretty normal—both are wearing plain jeans-and-t-shirts outfits and carrying large backpacks. She sighs, not feeling totally up to interacting with strangers, but nonetheless pulls the Jeep over to the highway shoulder. If this is part of Dawn’s idea of a summer road trip adventure, Buffy wants to give it to her.

“Where are you headed?” asks the girl. She’s about Buffy’s height with light brown skin and red streaks in her dark hair.

“San Francisco,” says Dawn, rolling down her window.

“Cool, us too,” says the guy, tall and blond, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

Dawn reaches behind her to unlock the door to the back seat. “Hop in,” she says, and Buffy thinks this will probably all be worth it just for the look of excitement on Dawn’s face.

* * *

“…so now, I’m going to go back to Jared’s apartment and knock on his door and show everyone how over him I really am,” says the girl—Leticia—pausing for breath for what’s got to be the first time in the past hour. Leticia reminds Buffy vaguely of Harmony, except for the fact that Harmony wouldn’t be caught dead hitchhiking. _Or should that be caught undead_? Buffy almost giggles at the thought, which is nice but kind of surprising. It always feels a little unexpected when she laughs, lately, even though she’s been doing it more and more.

Their other passenger—Dylan—gives Leticia a double thumbs up. Then, looking towards the front of the car, he says, “What’s that blinking light on your dashboard?”

“I think it means the car needs an oil change,” says Leticia before Buffy can even open her mouth.

“No, it definitely means there’s something seriously wrong with the breaks,” says Dylan. “My sister’s a mechanic, she knows these things.”

“If there was something really wrong with the car, it would have stopped by now,” reasons Leticia, shaking her head.

“Not if the thing that wasn’t working was the breaks, hello,” says Dylan.

Buffy shoots Dawn a glace that she hopes says, _inviting these very talkative people with questionable understandings of auto mechanics into the car was your idea._ Dawn slumps lower in her seat and nods sheepishly.

“Seriously,” says Leticia, “I think you should pull over, Buffy.”

Buffy is about to say that she’s pretty sure this car will get them the rest of the way to San Francisco at the very least when they hear a clunking sound coming from the front of the Jeep. “Oh my god,” says Dylan.

The clunking sound stops, then starts back up again. “Buffy?” says Dawn.

“We’re only another hour away,” says Buffy. They’re so close, dammit, and they have so many plans for when they get to the city, and this was her thing for Dawn, her way to show her sister the world for real. Buffy feels anxiety knotting in her stomach. The clunking continues.

“Seriously, look, there’s a service station a quarter mile from here,” says Leticia, pointing to a neon sign up ahead.

Buffy sighs. “Fine.”

* * *

“It’s OK, Buffy, it really is,” says Dawn, flopping down onto the motel mattress.

“No, it’s not! It’s already ten pm, we’ve been waiting here for five hours, the car’s still not fixed, it’s the car Mom drove us to Sunnydale in and it’s broken, we’re not in San Francisco, we’re in some crappy motel room at the side of the highway, and we’re going to have to pay for the car repairs with the money we were going to use for shopping.” Buffy flops down on the bed beside Dawn. “And,” she continues, “even if the car does get fixed tomorrow and we decide to keep going, we’re going to have to deal with those two again the rest of the way there.”

“Buffy, that’s not—this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for this weekend,” says Dawn, sitting up and smiling down at Buffy.

“You wanted to get stranded in the middle of nowhere with your sister and two annoying strangers,” Buffy deadpans.

“I wanted to do the adventure thing. Go with the flow. Y’know, have a cool story to tell when I start at the new, improved, hopefully less demony Sunnydale High in the fall. Be a girl of mystery. Sorry, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.” Dawn closes her eyes, her cheeks turning slightly red.

Buffy laughs, for real this time, until she feels tears in her eyes. After a few seconds, Dawn laughs with her, the two of them rolling around on the lumpy bed. Buffy doesn’t want to make the mistake of thinking this is another one of those Moments That Change Everything, because she’s finding that real life rarely makes quite that much sense. Instead, she just decides this is a moment that feels good, and despite the fact that she still has days where she feels cold and numb and distant, she has to admit she’s having more of the good moments lately, and a lot of them have to do with Dawn.

“OK,” says Buffy, sitting up and propping up a pillow behind her, “let’s see what’s on TV.”


End file.
